Bulwark Takes - Revenge Madman Kash Patel Confirmed As FBI Director

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

With Kash Patel confirmed as FBI director, Will Saletan talks the dangers of having all guardrails off with VP JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi also in key positions to help Donald Trump destroy democracy.

Hey everybody, it's Will from The Bulwark. I don't know if you caught this, but last week, our Vice President J.D. Vance went to Germany and he lectured our European allies about democracy. Here's what he said. For years, we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. Now, to start with, Vance completely distorted what actually happened in those countries. But that's not the most disgusting part of what he did.

The most disgusting part is that Vance himself literally got his job by making it clear that he was willing to overturn election results. In fact, the entire Trump administration is now stocked with people who refuse to acknowledge that Donald Trump has ever lost an election. We, not France, not Germany, We, the United States, are the NATO country most firmly controlled by anti-democratic election deniers like J.D. Vance. What I want to do today is show you how close we are to losing our democracy. You might remember that four years ago, when Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, people in critical positions in our government said no to him. What Trump has been doing since then, including just this week, is he's systematically replacing those people who said no with new people who will say yes. And today I'm going to show you three crucial examples.

The vice president, the attorney general, and the director of the FBI. Let's go back to January 6th, 2021. At that time, the vice president was Mike Pence. Trump wanted Pence to use his supervisory role in the counting of electoral votes to overturn that election. But Pence refused. And a year later, Pence reaffirmed that he would never do that. Watch.

And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. But President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Pence also acknowledged that Trump was wrong about what happened in that election. Pence pointed out that it was not stolen. Despite what the former president and his allies have said for now more than two and

a half years, and continue to insist to this very hour, the Georgia election was not stolen. My friend Governor Brian Kemp said it well yesterday. He said, quote, for nearly three years, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward to provide evidence in a court of law regarding the Georgia elections. So when it came time for Trump to choose a running mate in 2024, he did not ask Mike Pence. Trump found a more attractive option and that option was J.D. Vance. Now, it might seem a little weird to you that Trump would choose as vice president of the United States, a guy whose entire government experience consisted

of less than two years in the Senate. But Vance was attractive for one big reason. A year ago, Vance went on TV and signaled that he would have done for Trump what Pence would not do. Would you have certified the election results had you been vice president? If I had been vice president, I would have told the states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that's what we should have done. So it's very clear you would have done what Donald Trump asked you to do there, not what Mike's President Mike Pence did.

So Trump picked Vance to be his new vice president. And Trump got exactly what he wanted, a running mate who would echo Trump's lie that he had actually won the 2020 election. Here's what Vance told the New York Times in October. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Let me ask you a question. Is it okay that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, which independent analysis have said cost Donald Trump millions of votes? Senator Vance, I'm going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes? And here's what Vance said four days later at a rally in North Carolina. I think there are serious problems in 2020.

So did Donald Trump lose the election not by the words that I would use? Okay, so Trump now has a fully compliant vice president. That was a major guardrail that saved our democracy four years ago. And just like that, it's gone. So what's the next guardrail Trump needed to remove? The answer is his attorney general. In December of 2020, Trump pressured his then attorney general, Bill Barr, to support Trump's lie that massive voter fraud had corrupted the election.

But Barr wouldn't do it. Here's how Barr described those conversations in subsequent testimony to the House January 6th Committee. I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit. And, you know, I didn't want to be a part of it. And that's one of the reasons that went into me deciding to leave when I did. First, that, you know, how can we, you can't live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that the election, that there was fraud in the election. So Barr wouldn't play ball. But once again, an eager young politician stepped forward to signal that she would play ball. Pam Bondi, the former Attorney General of Florida, went to Pennsylvania after the 2020 election, and she stood with Eric Trump and Rudy Giuliani,

and she claimed, falsely, that Trump had won that state. Good evening, everyone. And as Eric Trump said, we are thrilled to have won Pennsylvania with 87% of the vote in. And then, as Trump fell behind in the count, Bondi went on Fox News and said the election was corrupted by fake ballots.

We do have evidence of cheating, and I'll talk about that in a minute. The good residents who are all supporting us in Pennsylvania, their votes don't count by these fake ballots that are coming in late. And back to the observation, they're not letting us watch the process. Pam, did you just say fake ballots? There could be. That's the problem. If they're letting, we don't know, Steve. Do you have, have you heard stories of, you know, ballots that are fake?

And if so, just tell us what you know. Well, we know that ballots have been dumped. There were ballots that were found early on. No, no. In fact, those stories about dumped ballots were false. Bondi never did produce evidence to support her allegations. But by talking about fake ballots, she proved she was a team player. So this time, when Trump did win the election, he picked Bondi to be his attorney

general. And again, he got what he wanted. Last month at her confirmation hearing, Bondi refused again to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. Are you prepared to say today under oath without reservation that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020? Ranking member Durbin, President Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in and he is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in and he is the president of the United States. There was a peaceful transition of power. President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024. You heard it.

She brags that Trump won in 2024, but she won't say he lost in 2020. Okay, so Trump now has a vice president who's willing to lie about election results and try to overturn the outcome. And he has an attorney general who won't admit that he lost an election and will accuse Democrats of cheating with fake ballots.

So that's two guardrails of democracy gone. But just to be safe, Trump is getting rid of one more guardrail, the director of the FBI. In 2020, the FBI director was Chris Wray. He was actually appointed by Trump in 2017, after Trump corruptly fired the previous FBI director. But during the 2020 election, Wray acknowledged that there was no sign of significant voter fraud.

And after the election, here's what Wray said in response to this question from Senator Cory Booker. And to be crystal clear on this, as FBI director, who is, these would be federal crimes, you're aware of no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, correct? We are not aware of any widespread evidence of voter fraud, much less that would have affected the outcome in the presidential election. And Wray didn't just say he was unaware of widespread fraud. He explained that the FBI looked for fraud and couldn't find it. As former Attorney General Barr and former Acting Attorney General Rosen have both said,

we just, we looked, but we didn't see evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the presidential election. So when Trump won the 2024 election, he decided to get rid of Wray, which is already alarming because the FBI director is not supposed to be replaced when a new president comes in. The FBI director is supposed to serve an independent 10-year term. But Trump wanted a director who would help him lie about voter fraud. And he found just the right guy, Kash Patel. Here's what Patel told Trump's followers a year and a half ago. Donald Trump has every right to tell the world that he won the 2020 election. That is not an illegal position to take. He has every right to tell the world that the 2020 and 2016 and every other election in between was rigged by our government because they were.

And then a few months later, Patel promised to go after the people he accused of rigging that election, including journalists. They're the ones that lied to the American public over and over again to rig a presidential election. We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're gonna come after, but in the media. Yes,

we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. And then at his confirmation hearing a couple of weeks ago, Patel refused to back down from his allegation that Trump's loss in 2020 was rigged. Do you agree with him that the election was stolen in 2020? Senator, millions of Americans express concern going back to multiple elections over election integrity. You know, you're so skillful. You understand what I'm asking you.

Can you say the words, Joe Biden won the 2020 election? Joe Biden was the president of the United States. Today, Republicans in the Senate locked arms and confirmed that man to lead the FBI. So Trump now has in place a vice president, an attorney general, and an FBI director who support his lie that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. And that puts him in position to do what he tried to do four years ago, overturn the next election. And if Trump can't figure out a way to run for a third term, which would be unconstitutional, the person most likely to be the Republican presidential nominee

in that election is J.D. Vance. And guess who's going to preside over the counting of electoral votes. That's right, Vance. And if he needs an attorney general and an FBI director who will back him up by claiming that the election was fraudulent, he's already got those two people in place. That's how easy it is to end democracy in America. You just need to find the right people. See you next time.